Month: March 2000

In 1997 I closed my antiques shop in Vermont and moved to California to begin a snow-free life. I neither intended nor expected to become an expert on homelessness, either human or quadruped.

When the cottage I had rented in Oakland was sold, I failed to find another apartment for me and my two dogs. The three of us movedback into the camper van in which I had crossed the country, staying with friends for a few days here and there, house-sitting once for four weeks.

Since then I have experienced apartment hunting in Miami, San Diego, and suburban New York. Renting with pets is tough. And it is not just a problem for renters. It is also a growing problem for the humane community.

MOSCOW, WASHINGTON D.C.– – Kremlin-watchers wondered, when former KGB chief Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltzin as president of Russia, if Putin could develop the political skills of democracy.

They need not have worried. Putin showed on his third day in office that he can craft an image of standing for one thing while doing the other just as well as any American counterpart.

Putin on January 5 vetoed an animal protection bill which had cleared the Russian parliament 273-1, but was opposed by sealers because it would have prohibited seal-killing in order to save the diminutive and fast-vanishing Nerpa seal of landlocked Lake Baikal.

I read with a mix of hope and intense disgust the January/February 2000 ANIMAL PEOPLE feature about overseas animal shelters trying to avoid repeating U.S. and European mistakes.

Especially interesting to me were the remarks of Wu Hung, founder of the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan. Until recently Wu Hung chaired the Life Conservationist Association of Taiwan, a group which in name was active, but by way of activity did little more than publish pamphlets. I have talked with Wu Hung on occasion during my six years in Taiwan, and your article brought home to me the true evil that many of the large, rich organizations of conventional outlook are wreaking on animal rescue overseas.

As the first month of the new millennium ended, ANIMAL PEOPLE had heard of only three “Y2K crisis” items involving animal protection.

One was the usual New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July surge in numbers of dogs running at large, terrified by fireworks. But even the news on that front was unusually good, as the South African National SPCA on January 25 won agreements from the U.S.-owned retail chains Toys R Us and R e g g i e ’ s that they would no longer sell fireworks at any of their 41 South African stores.

South African campaigners were on a streak, as 51,000 South Africans reportedly signed a Beauty Without Cruelty petition asking that the legal status of animals be changed from “chattel” to “sentient beings.”

Vicki Moore, 44, founder of Fight Against Animal Cruelty in Europe, died in Liverpool, England, on December 6, from complications of a goring she suffered while videotaping a bull run through the streets of Coria, Spain, in July 1995. “It took one minute 36 seconds to get her to the hospital,” her husband Tony Moore said, “and then they operated for seven hours. The bull was shot immediately, which was good for the bull. They said he was too dangerous. They don’t like to be in too much danger when they do what they do. When I told Vicki, she burst into tears.” A former actress, Moore documented animal abuse undercover at Spanish fiestas for more than a decade before her injury, and rescued many of the animals she saw mistreated, including Blackie the Donkey, who as a longtime guest of The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon, became poster-animal for her cause. Blackie died in 1994. Moore’s longest battle was against the custom of throwing a goat from a 60-foot church tower during an annual festival in Manganeses de la Polverosa, Spain. Moore saw a nanny goat killed there in 1990, and won an order from the governor of Zamora that a goat not be thrown in 1991. Thereafter, defying such orders became part of the tradition––until this year, when the town council threatened to fine anyone who helped toss a goat. The festival was held on January 23, and the goat-toss was not done.

The Kane County Chronicle, of Geneva, Illinois, in mid-January devoted a three-part series to the civil liberties aspects of Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon’s ongoing attempt to prosecute S H A R K founder Steve Hindi for felony eavesdropping. Hindi in July 1999 taped a police officer who was refusing, in front of a crowd of 10,000, to arrest several rodeo performers for acts of cruelty which Hindi had documented on film. Kane County Chronicle reporter Brenda Schory found that the law Hindi is accused of breaking was passed by the Illinois legislature after members were embarrased during the 1960s by public disclosure of various vulgar remarks they made while on the floor but not actually at the podium.

Molly Fearing, who as a teacher at Graham High School in Champaign County, Ohio, unsuccessfully pressed a cruelty charge last year against a fellow teacher for having a student bash a piglet’s head against the parking lot, is now working in a Honda assembly plant after accepting a buy-out offer to leave the school district. She would like to return to teaching, D o n Baird of the Columbus Dispatch recently reported, but because of the local unpopularity of her stand for animals, she would probably have to relocate to find another classroom job.

Investigators from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and U.S. Forest Service on February 2 raided the Liberation Collective house in Portland, Oregon, home of frequent direct action spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh, 27. Rosebraugh was also subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury on February 29. Rosebraugh was previously subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in September 1997. Identified by Robert Sullivan of The New York Times Magazine in December 1998 as “The Face of Eco-Terrorism,” Rosebraugh has since June 1997 often been the first person to publicize actions attributed to the Earth Liberation Front, including the October 1998 Vail ski lift arson and a New Year’s Eve fire at the Michigan State University Hall of Agriculture. Rosebraugh has also publicized some actions attributed to the Animal Liberation Front, but insists he does not know who the ELF and ALF perpetrators are. Rosebraugh served on the steering committee for the 1999 Primate Freedom T o u r, along with longtime activists Rick Bogle and Linda Howard. It was reputedly a shaky alliance, in part due to strong differences over the use of clandestine tactics. Rosebraugh’s presence on the bus is believed to have caused BATF and the Wisconsin Justice Department Division of Criminal Investigation to extensively search it when a stop at Madison coincided with two nearby alleged ALF actions against mink ranchers.

TEHRAN––Abdolreza Izadpaneh, advisor to Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, in midJanuary told the Tehran newspaper Entekhab that the Judges Disciplinary Court would investigate the conduct of a lower court judge who earlier in the month ordered the slaughter of 170 pigeons to settle a dispute between two neighbors over who owned one of the birds.

“The head of the judiciary expressed sorrow upon hearing the verdict and ordered a probe into the case,” recounted Izadpaneh.

According to Associated Press, “The pigeons were slaughtered the same day the verdict was announced, prompting condemnations from animal protection groups and ordinary Iranians,” in a nation where public opposition to the actions of Islamic fundamentalist clerics is reputedly rare and sometimes fatal.

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